


Broken

by Plume8now



Series: Tumblr Prompts [9]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Anxiety, Comfort, Empathy, Friendship, Gen, Minor Anxiety attack, Nakamaship, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-Whole Cake Island, Tumblr Prompt, usopp is a good friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 07:22:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20738420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plume8now/pseuds/Plume8now
Summary: He remembered how they all hugged when he came back.He remembered how tight his embrace had been. How warm – how needy it was. There was a strong thirst for affection and support, and they all provided it to him the best they could.





	Broken

“_ Putain de bordel de merde! _”

Half of the crew froze on the deck when this scream of pure frustration came out of the kitchen.

Zoro’s nap did not seem to be disturbed the least, and Robin did not look like she was willing to look away from her book – as if it was just ‘another’ trouble among many others on the Thousand Sunny she just could afford to ignore. On the other side of the boat, Brook, Franky and Jinbei were obviously too busy having a debate on the different degrees and stages of humour, especially since Big Mom’s former crewmate clearly kept trying to prove his point through ‘jokes’ no one _ ever _understood.

Luffy and Chopper stopped fighting over the fish they just caught for a second, and the Straw Hat doctor would probably have checked on Sanji if Luffy did not try to swallow what Chopper qualified as an ‘extremely poisonous’ fish. Not that the Future Pirate King could be affected by that, but if that could avoid having a Captain complaining about his stomach for the next twenty-four hours. Plus, it was not as if ingesting poison, even when one was immune to it, was a particularly good idea.

Nami was busy taking care of her orange trees, and Usopp was having his usual daily talk with his ‘baby plants’ when the cook… exploded. Truth was, it wasn’t the first, and probably not the last time this week.

“You should go,” Nami told the sniper.

“Me?” Usopp asked, disconcerted. “Didn’t you just hear-”

“Well yeah, I did,” she didn’t even bother looking up. “That’s why I said you should go.”

“Why not you? I’m sure you’d do a better job-“

“I don’t know how to fix things like you. And Franky’s already busy, so…”

“Fix things?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s what it is about. I’ve seen Luffy playing with the mixer, two days ago… I’m actually surprised it lasted that long.”

Usopp glanced at Luffy. Their eyes met, and his idiot Captain grinned and waved at him, with this innocent look on his face, as if he had never done anything wrong in his entire life.

“Alright, but if that’s not it-“

“That’s it.”

Usopp sighed.

*

When Usopp arrived at the kitchen, he expected the cook to be as angry as his scream implied merely a few seconds ago. Instead, the young man only found the kitchen apparently empty. With a few more steps, however, his eyes fell to his nakama sitting on the floor, as if life had lost all its meaning. On his face was the expression of a man who had given up all hope as he sat there on the floor.

“Hm-“ Usopp muttered. “You need anything?”

If he didn’t know his friend any better, Usopp would have thought he’d scared Sanji, somehow. The cook’s body contracted, and, upon seeing his nakama, seemed to relax a bit.

“Nah,” he said, then paused. “I don’t know, maybe. That damn machine’s broken. It’s- it’s useless. I… can’t do this on my own.”

He pointed at the mixer – of course Nami was right. He looked like he wanted to add something, but prevented himself from doing so at the very last second. 

After taking a look at it, and spending half of the afternoon swearing and cursing Luffy – who knew what he did with that thing – probably tried to make some fish with it or something, like the damn idiot that he is – Usopp finally was able to fix it. In the meantime, Sanji spent his time behind him, trying to help and see what he could do, in vain. Whenever he asked “Can’t I do something?” Usopp replied “No thanks, just be patient.” To his “Are you sure this is fine?” the sniper started to lose patience, but never gave in.

Yet, something felt wrong.

Sanji wouldn’t react like that. It wasn’t like him to just, act like… like Luffy would. There was a nuance, though- Luffy would have been immensely annoying because he was bored, probably. Sanji’s voice was stained with worry.

“All done now,” Usopp declared.

Sanji smiled and thanked him. He then went for a cigarette, and unsuccessfully tried to light it. His hands were shaking. Without giving it any thought, Usopp put his hand on his, and in a slow, soft movement, put his matches and cigarette away.

“Luffy played with it,” he said, after a while. “That’s why it wasn’t working.”

He couldn’t see Sanji’s eyes, and he knew it was probably for the best for the cook. It wasn’t unusual that one of them would get a sudden anxiety attack or something of the sort. He did not really know much about it – but he’d seen them before. Hell, he was the King of anxiety. He knew how stress and PTSD worked.

And Sanji had been back only recently. Everything that happened on the Whole Cake Island – was so violently marked and present in his mind. The sniper was actually impressed by his nakama’s strength.

He remembered how they all hugged when he came back.

He remembered how tight his embrace had been. How warm – how needy it was. There was a strong thirst for affection and support, and they all provided it to him the best they could.

“It was broken,” he continued. “But now it’s okay. Everything’s fine. Nothing’s completely broken, anyway, as long as it’s here, there’s still a use.”

Sanji tensed, and Usopp just went for it. After a few seconds, he felt Sanji’s arm sliding on his back, and the man finally returned the hug he offered.

“We’re all happy that you can use that mixer again, Sanji,” he muttered. “Can you imagine how it would have been, if Luffy had kept trying to make fish dishes with it?”

There was a soft chuckle coming out of the cook, and a reassuring warmth spread through the sniper’s body.

“This kitchen would be a catastrophe without me,” Sanji’s soft, broken voice answered.

“Yeah,” Usopp happily replied, his eyes slightly wet.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you everyone for reading this prompt! This work has been corrected by my friend Petite Neko, and was built around the sentence "I can't do this on my own"~  
Feedbacks are more than welcome!


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